A quick disclaimer before my report/review thing. If you're a hardcore DragonForce fan, or an otherwise objective music fan that likes them, please feel free to skip this entire post. Thank you.

As you can see, I went to this show for obviously one band on this tour. Sure, it was with another band I did not have any serious desire to pay to see.. But hell, it's Cynic, it's $20 and it's in my home town.

Some bad reviews for Cynic and Daath's performances left me a little skeptical to see how this show would have panned out. Let's start out with the band that opened the show; Daath. Their music seems to straddle melodeath, technical death metal, prog metal and industrial with neither style having a predominate stranglehold on the sound. The dudes themselves even look like they're Dark Tranquillity Jr. However, their live show completely took me by surprise after several reports on this site seemingly canned 'em. We were treated to surprisingly strong playing, very good musicianship (including a very well-executed drum and guitar solo), random but humurous interludes/crowd interaction and overall decent songs. I will agree that the lead singer didn't do a whole lot for me. Overall, a suprisingly solid and peppy affair. Here's all I could attempt to remember, set-wise:

After that came the moment of truth for the show - Cynic's performance. 8 songs, only one of which coming from the debut album; it looks as though this would be a more lightweight venture than I had thought... And it was. But they managed to pull off the newer songs with great precision in the live setting. The dudes are diverse and incredibly adequate players. Paul was very well received by a good portion of the audience; some of which had even admitted to driving numerous hours to attend this performance.. Who'da thunkit? Not a blowaway performance, but a wonderfully-executed account of the songs nonetheless. Set's the same as they've been doing..

Nunc Fluens
The Space For This
Evolutionary Sleeper
Adam's Murmer
Celestial Voyage
The Unknown Guest
King Of Those Who Know
Integral Birth

And to be fair, I did stick around for Dragonforce's first song.. which was preluded by one of the most annoying intro themes I've heard. It was some electronica video game action muzak that was made to sound all macho, but ended up sounding completely ridiculous (much like Guitar Hero itself, IMO). The playing itself may not have been as much of a joke as people would like you to believe (I will give them that), but the vibe was unbelievably flowery and contrived, reeking of ProTools.

Wow, not even Veil of Maya. Even Maiden wouldn't pull that one on the fans.

No doubt. This almost seems like a mistake. It's only 30-35 minutes worth of material.

The set list for the Meshuggah tour included "Celestial Voyage", "Veil of Maya" and "How Could I?" - in addition to "I'm But a Wave To..." (which in some cases was substituted with "Uroboric Forms", such as the show I saw in Chicago).

That was the one I wanted to hear. All this could be solved with a proper headlining tour. Now that they've tested the waters and got a buzz going about their shows and new album, it wouldn't be a bad idea.

I saw them two weeks ago in Fargo, and they were the one band on the bill that I was interested in seeing. Having now seen them I would NOT pay to see a headlining Cynic show regardless of what songs they did or did not play. It was one of the most disappointing metal shows I've ever been to. If they made even the slightest attempt to be entertaining I didn't notice, and the singer's nervous, awkward between-songs commentary didn't improve the situation in the slightest. If you're that shy what in the name of god are you doing on a stage? Sorry, but showmanship really does matter. Dragonforce, on the other hand, turned out to be a spectacular live act... and I'm not even really a fan!

I agree that the guys in Daath can play. If they'd fire Cookie Monster and get a SINGER!!! then they'd probably be a damn good band.